Zero Squared

a philosophy podcast from zero books

Aimee Terese is a socialist, a law student, the co-host of the Dead Pundits Society, and a #Metoo heretic. She is also the guest on this week’s episode of Zero Squared.

I want to remind listeners that Zero Books produces two podcasts every week, one for free and one for people who support us on Patreon. We also run a youtube channel featuring video essays from myself and the Zero Books team, and we have just started a Zero Books reading group. Patrons who support us at $15 a month receive a new Zero Books title every month along with an invitation to an online discussion group. The first discussion group will be livestreamed on Sunday at 11am Pacific and I’ll leave a link in the show notes.

This week's Symptomatic Redness features Michael Brooks and C Derick Varn as they debate and discuss the American radical left under Trump. Should the left turn to the democrats again? If not, what realistic opportunities or strategies might we take up? If so, is the DSA the best chance for reshaping or shifting the course of the democrats?

Michael Brooks is the host of The Michael Brooks show, the co-host of the Majority Report with Sam Seder, and an author currently working on a book for Zero Books.

Virgil Texas and Matt Christman are two of the five co-hosts from the hugely popular leftist podcast Chapo Trap House and they stopped by the Zero Books podcast this week to discuss their new book The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts and Reason.

Like Chapo, Zero Books has a Patreon. Unlike Chapo we don’t have tens of thousands of patreon supporters. We do have over four hundred supporters, however, and we are producing a second podcast for this select group every week. We’ve also started a Zero Books book club and supporters on Patreon can participate in an online discussion group about a select Zero Books title every month. If you enjoy the podcast or just want to support the imprint you might consider becoming a patron on our Patreon.

Vakhtang Gomelauri is a Clinical Social Worker and Therapist with a Lacanian bent living in New York City. He is a returning guest and was on the opposite side of Zero Books panel/debate at this year’s Left Forum. In this episode we almost discuss Avital Ronnell, postmodernism, and Lacan.

We’ve started a Zero Books reading group for our patrons. It runs $15 a month on Patreon and the first book on our list is Anselm Jappe’s The Writing on the Wall. Support us on Patreon and join in reading Jappe’s book and participate in an online discussion. All of our supporters get access to the Symptomatic Redness and Alternatives podcasts, and patrons who donate five dollars a month or higher get access to Inside Zero Books podcast as well, which means they get access to a second podcast every week. Patreon supporters are helping us continue to produce our youtube channel and other online projects like our online Capital reading group which is schedule for this coming Saturday at 9am Pacific.

Glenn Loury is a Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences at Brown University, the author of The Anatomy of Racial Inequality, the host of the Glenn Show at bloggingheads.tv, a quasi member of the Intellectual Dark Web (he is, at the very least, scheduled to sit on a panel with Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, and Bret Weinstein in November in order to discuss the topic of race) and a returning guest to this podcast.

We’ve started a Zero Books reading group for our patrons. It runs $15 a month on Patreon and the first book on our list is Anselm Jappe’s The Writing on the Wall. Support us on Patreon and join in reading Jappe’s book and participate in an online discussion. All of our supporters get access to the Symptomatic Redness and Alternatives podcasts, and patrons who donate five dollars a month or higher get access to Inside Zero Books podcast as well, which means they get access to a second podcast every week. Patreon supporters are helping us continue to produce our youtube channel and other online projects like our online Capital reading group.

Michael Brooks is the host of the Michael Brooks Show and the co-host on the Majority Report. He is also a future Zero Books author with a book in the works on the Intellectual Dark Web and a regular guest on the Zero Books podcast. This week Brooks returns to discuss the tragic, awful, conspiracy that took Alex Jones off of youporn.

We’ve started a Zero Books reading group for our patrons. It runs $15 a month on Patreon and the first book on our list is Anselm Jappe’s The Writing on the Wall. Support us on Patreon and join in reading Jappe’s book and participate in an online discussion. All of our supporters get access to the Symptomatic Redness and Alternatives podcasts, and patrons who donate five dollars a month or higher get access to Inside Zero Books podcast as well, which means they get access to a second podcast every week. Patreon supporters are helping us continue to produce our youtube channel and other online projects like our online Capital reading group.

KMO is the host of the C-Realm podcast, a show that has been appearing weekly online for over a decade, an actor, an author and has recently returned to cartooning. His comic strip GEBB is online at GEBB.io. GEBB is the story of a group of aliens, in spite of themselves, working to save Earth from human destruction and KMO and I discuss the strip, his creative process, and the broader UFO/Abductee phenomenon in this podcast.

It’s Thursday, August 9th, 2018 and I’m Douglas Lain the publisher of Zero Books and the host of this podcast.

Last week I announced that we’re starting a Zero Books club for patrons who contribute $30 a month through Patreon, but we’ve decided that was too expensive. So now people who donate $15 a month to the podcast will receive a selected Zero Books title every month along with an invitation to join an online Zero Books reading group. It’s a way to not only read our newest titles, but also a way to virtually meet Zero Books authors as they’ll be participating in these online discussions whenever possible. All of our supporters get access to the Symptomatic Redness and Alternatives podcasts, and patrons who donate five dollars a month or higher get access to Inside Zero Books podcast as well, which means they get access to a second podcast every week. Patreon supporters are helping us continue to produce our youtube channel and other online projects like our online Capital reading group.

Chris Cutrone is a member of the Platypus Affiliated Society, a professor at The School of Art Institute of Chicago, and a returning guest to the Zero Books podcast. He is the author of a controversial essay entitled “Why Not Trump.” The piece was a half-hearted endorsement of Trump as the better adversary for the left, an opinion that is not at all self-evident today under Trump. However, this week we discuss the late Moishe Postone as well as Adolph Reed in the context of the death of politics.

I want to thank everyone for supporting the Zero Books podcast on Patreon. We have passed our goal of reaching 400 patrons and this month we are announcing a new reward tier. Listeners who contribute $30 a month through Patreon will receive a select Zero Books title every month along with an invitation to join an online Zero Books reading group. Often enough Zero Books author will participate in these online discussions of their work with our patrons. All of our supporters get access to the Symptomatic Redness, and Alternatives podcasts, and for five dollars a month or higher supporters get access to Inside Zero Books podcast, which means that supporters get access to a second podcast every week. Patreon supporters are helping us continue to produce our youtube channel and other online projects like our online Capital reading group.

In part one of a two part conservation, J. M. Colon returns to discuss civility norms in the DSA. In this discussion, the history of the NSDS and “calling in” are discussed as well as problems and possibilities around the use and abuse of such norms. We also discuss the history of DSA expansion, the structure of local bodies, the use of civility norms and the implications for the broader left. Tangential topics that emerge include “victimization as a means of empowerment," the baggage that each person brings to a socialist group and the dangers of therapy and therapeutic conceptions in a political context. We also touch on the history of the SDS and First International as historical models are problematized by their dissolution"

Michael Brooks is the host of the Michael Brooks Show, the co-host of the Majority Report, and a future author for Zero Books. This week he returns to the Zero Books podcast to discuss Jordan Peterson and the left-wing Jungian James Hillman.

I want to thank everyone for supporting the Zero Books podcast on Patreon. We just passed our goal of reaching 400 patrons. Patreon supporters get access to the the Inside Zero Books, Symptomatic Redness, and the Alternatives podcasts. Counting Zero Squared, Patreon supporters get access to two podcasts every week and are helping us continue to produce our youtube channel and other online projects like our Capital reading group.

Podcast Summary

Zero Squared

is a philosophy podcast from Zero Books. Zero publishes radical philosophy, aesthetics, film theory, experimental fiction, and anything else that smells faintly of the avant-garde. Our books aim not only to demonstrate how philosophical ideas are relevant to every day life, but also to change the terms of it. Douglas Lain is the host of this podcast and the publisher of Zero Books. He hosted the Diet Soap podcast out of this feed for five years. Zero Squared will continue the tradition of Diet Soap while giving Zero Books authors a chance to talk about their work.

Douglas Lain is the publisher of zero books. He is also a novelist and podcaster. His novel “Billy Moon” tells the story of Christopher Robin Milne’s fictional involvement with the French general strike in May of 1968, and was published by Tor Books in 2013.